The present disclosure generally relates to processing of online requests for content and more particularly to a method and apparatus for aggregating multimedia content requests based on RSS feeds to monitor trending data and generate content specific multimedia pages based on the trending data.
The amount of multimedia content available to online users has grown dramatically over the recent past. Some users access this multimedia content as “followers” where the multimedia information and updates to such information related to one or more topics is indicated as being of interest to the user and may be pushed to the user by the content provider. Content hosting services also exist that allow users to create user profiles that include demographic information which is used to select multimedia content that may be of interest to the user. Another way to access this multimedia content is through the use of online social networking sites. In particular, multimedia content may be shared by a user via a profile or landing page, maintained by a user, on an online social networking site. Typically, a user may save hypertext representing a hyperlink to particular multimedia content such as, for example, a webpage, a video, a document, etc., on the user's profile or landing page. Although the hyperlink is saved on the user's profile or landing page, the multimedia content itself is usually from a third party source saved on a remote server or system. Each time a user selects the hyperlink, the current version of the multimedia content saved by the third party source is accessed and displayed. Content providers are typically interested to know which of their content is most popular among users especially content accessed by users of social networking applications. Unfortunately, these social networking sites may have particular requirements to allow content providers to retrieve use data to determine trending information about how many social networking users are accessing its multimedia content, what types of content users are accessing and when they are accessing this content. This data retrieval is usually provided for by social networking sites through the use of an Application Programming Interface (API) which allows content providers to access the various systems to download use data. Unfortunately, retrieving this data from the social networking site via an API on a regular basis to provide trending interest patterns among users isn't feasible with current social networking system requirements and processing bandwidth.
Certain applications exist today that allow users to manage their social media content and other favorite web sites into various formats. For example, Flipboard is a social-network aggregation system that organizes a user's social media content and favorite web sites into a format to allow the user to “flip” through their selected content. However, the content within Flipboard is defined by the user. Another example of such an application is Google Currents which sorts multimedia content by topics from particular sources. However, these content applications do not provide a means for managing multimedia content based on trending topics/stories that users are sharing via social networking sites. In addition, present multimedia content aggregation is not distinguished by the source of the multimedia content or by the content provider. In other words, existing applications do not provide information about where and how a user accesses particular multimedia content rather than just by the mere fact that a user accesses certain content to determine trending topics. It would be useful to provide multimedia content based on trending data representing sharing activity of such content by users of social networking sites in order to provide consolidated multimedia content information and targeted advertising based on this trending data. It is with respect to these and other considerations that the present improvements have been needed.